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Sonic Delta 40Mb

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Esrael, Mar 9, 2020.

  1. Esrael

    Esrael

    Neto Tech Member
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    Neto Assembler Editor / Sonic 2 Delta / Neto MD-DOS
    This is an old project from 2015 (Released under Delta Next in this Thread), where the idea was to have all Sonic Levels in a single game.
    Whats new?
    -This version uses Sonic 3 & Knuckles engine;
    -All Sonic 1, Sonic 2 Delta, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Kncukles Levels;
    -Four Bonus Stages System (Sonic 1 Special Stage as Bonus Stage and The 3 Bonus Stages from S3K);

    This version uses bank switch system to access data between 0x400000 and 0x4FFFFF.

    Real hardware, chinese Flash Carts and Everdrive MD compatible, but Save will not work on these device, since they don't uses SEGA mapper and SRAM simultaneous.
    Compatible with Mega Drive Tectoy 2017 and ATGames equipped with Red Kid 2500 processor. SRAM function is supported in these device if using "Neto MD-DOS version 1.10" or higher.
    Since this version uses bank switch system, this doesn't conflict with SEGA CD.
    KEGA compatible.

    Level Select Code:
    In Title Screen, input the sequence Up, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up, after hearing the ring chime, the "Sound Test" option will be available.

    To Access mini game "GET BLUE SPHERES", in Title Screen Highlight the "1 PLAYER" option and then hold "A-B-C" Buttons and hit "START".

    Accessing the Bonus Stage:
    Collect 20 or more rings and then hit a lamppost. The formula for selecting which Bonus Stage will be played is "RING" count divided by 4 and the remmainder of operation will give the stage to be played:
    0 - Slot Machine;
    1 - Glowing Spheres;
    2 - Gumball Machine;
    3 - Sonic 1 Special Stage.

    Sonic 2 Delta v0.29 ( 40 Mb ) Download Page.

    Edit: Latest version is available in: Sonic Delta 40 Mb Home Page

    Bugs! Please comments.

    Best regards:
    -----------------
    Neto
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2020
  2. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    WOW every Sonic level in one game? That's incredible. I can't wait to give this a try later.
     
  3. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

    I like Sonic Advance Member
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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Well damn that looks promising. Will give this a try later.
     
  4. There clearly is a God, and his name is Esrael.

    I remember back in the day when folks would say it was IMPOSSIBLE to have Sonic 3 & Knux levels in one game. Now we're here. 20 fuckin years. Jesus christ. He did it boys.
     
  5. Really is nice, although there are a few bugs that could be ironed out:

    - Twice I've had the game crash on me - once in HPZ1, and once in DEZSK2.
    - The music fade-out in the Sonic 3&K half of the game is rather buggy.
    - Near the end of Scrap Brain Zone 1, there's an object which flips the player's gravity, making traversal to the end of the level harder than expected.
    - Pretty insane lag spikes during LZ and after defeating the MGZ2 boss.
    - The Insta-shield doesn't show up on level load, and doesn't even seem to function in the Sonic 1 & 2 half of the game.
    - The elemental shields and insta-shield lack SFX when in the Sonic 1 & 2 half of the game.
    - There's a segment on the lower path of LZ1 which Sonic can't jump up thanks to the adjusted physics in Sonic 3&K's engine.
    - FBZ1's music has the bugged echo track like in Sonic 3 alone.
    - LBZ1 and both acts of LRZ seem to have alignment issues with their animated tiles, resulting in them being replaced with garbage tiles. The former I know had the exact same problem in one of the S3C protoypes.
    - You get a perfect bonus for the Sonic 2 special stages.
    - The game doesn't remember what emeralds you collected in the Sonic 2 half of the game to some degree.
    - Tails's flight sounds are bugged in the Sonic 1 & 2 half of the game.
    - Shortly after entering DEZSK2, the HPZSK/SSZ teleporter rotating palette is enabled.
    - Palette change calls in the Sonic 1 & 2 half of the game end up with the entire palette row requested to be changed turned white.
    - SCZ has an act symbol, despite only having one act.
    - The retracting springs in DEZ2 don't work.
    - You can walk off the right edge of the screen when it is locked for a boss battle, at least in the Sonic 3&K half of the game. This can cause some major problems with miniboss transitions and zone transitions - once I managed to despawn the cannon used in the CNZS3-ICZ transition, forcing me to walk off the edge of the screen (again) and die.
    - The save select doesn't recognise DEZSK, and instead has Zone 36 be another copy of SSZ.

    One more minor nit-pick which likely showed up since this version was created - "Dust Hill Zone" should be named "Sand Shower Zone". Also, a suggestion: Sonic 3 Prototype music, perhaps?

    Would love to see this project continue ahead!

    Also I need to emphasise that having 37 Sonic Zones in just a little over 4MB is insane - I wonder if it'd be possible to get that down to 4MB?
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
  6. Super Egg

    Super Egg

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    Sonic 2 beta 3 hoax
    Well for starters, holy shit. I can't say I'm too surprised, but still, this has been a long time coming.

    So, I do have a few bugs to report.
    1. Some sound effects don't go. Shield effects are one thing that comes to mind.
    2. Any stage that uses the Aquatic Ruins Boss (ARZ & WZ) don't load.
    3. CNZ and MTZ boss use a wrong palette pointer, so it pops up this pure white palette that replaces the boss palette.
    4. Some stages have some wonky collision markers. SLZ has bits where you just randomly come to a stop after you go through a loop.
    5. Certain objects or effects kinda crash the game. The bats in HPZ and the teleporter pads are things that come to mind.
    6. SRAM support is all over the place. I ran through my entire run up to HPZ(S2), the game crashed from the aforementioned bats, and then I restarted the game.....My save file was gone.
    7. You lose shields when exiting Bonus stages.

    A few criticisms.

    1. Man, why you gotta use those ugly Sonic 3 Sonic sprites. =V
    2. Your level design in your old levels are still quite.....well not very good. Wood Zone in particular was a bad time either due to how collisions layers were activated, or because of enemy placements right above where springs are.

    Otherwise, still an impressive feat. Good job my guy!
     
  7. I did update the wiki page to represent the update - although whether it will remain that way is up to the admins, really.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
  8. VAdaPEGA

    VAdaPEGA

    Freelance Digital Artist Member
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    Probably something minimalistic



    I didn't know about the level select when I made the video but here are some further notes:
    • Game crashes in Sonic 1 and 2, regardless of what region I set my console to.
    • Sonic 1's Special Stage works fine, and so does every Sonic 3 & Knuckles level I've tried.
    • Sonic 2's Special Stage crashes with an Illegal Instruction.
     
  9. Esrael

    Esrael

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    Thanks for testing and reporting errors. I will work on fixing them.

    Look likes your device is not enabling SEGA Mapper Support. For Everdrive MD and chineese version the SEGA Mapper is enabled by default. In my X3, the device refused to load the game, but doing some research in X3 boot loader. I've found, if you change the 'SEGA GENESIS" string to "SEGA SSFESIS" (SEGA SSF The remain does not matter) in the ROM Header the device will enable SEGA Mapper Support, but SAVE still not supported.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
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  10. vexatious

    vexatious

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    Great job with your project! Please tell me if you know a way to source the Sega Mapper Bank Switching device or clone it; any information regarding datasheet, schematics or reverse engineering the mapper would be great too. I only have some vague schematics with lots of information missing. Thanks for any help.
     
  11. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

    bobs over baghdad Member
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    making cool music no one gives a shit about
    I only got so far as Green Hill 2 due to severe lag in Picodrive/Retroarch. I'll mess with other emulators though, I know Picodrive isn't the best. I did notice two glitches though: I managed to outrun the camera when taking the double s-tunnel in GHZ1, and hit the bottom of the stage boundary and died before it could catch up. Then, in GHZ2, I was able to glide over most of the stage as Knuckles, and then drop straight down into the special stage ring without triggering the goalpost, leaving the game softlocked.

    Caveats aside, this is seriously satisfying to see pulled off, and I'm glad you're still hacking after all this time. I remember being a kid in grade school and telling everyone on the playground about your hacks; going to your website to grab this update brought back warm memories. Thanks for continuing to make the magic happen.
     
  12. Wafer

    Wafer

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    I'm actually having an AtGames portable delivered tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to giving this a try with MD-DOS. Great work, Esrael!
    At the risk of preempting Esrael, I think you're unlikely to find much information about the hardware of the mapper. Most people are interested in implementing the software interface for the mapper, but not implementing the mapper itself in hardware, since most people would be running homebrew from EverDrives anyway.

    You could maybe ask krikzz, but I suspect he'd be a bit protective of his research, since he uses it in a commercial product.

    For what it's worth, Sik has a nice page on the software side of things. If you can implement hardware that works in the way the software expects, then there's really no difference. The other option is to implement your own mapper, at which point you needn't even limit yourself to 8MB.

    I'm really only answering because last time you posted about it you were posting in a thread that really had nothing to do with the mapper, and posted some random link about developing for the 32x using ancient software in a virtual machine, which really didn't add anything to the conversation.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
  13. vexatious

    vexatious

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    Okay wafer thanks. TBH your post upsets me but perhaps I'm stressed today. Either way, I just want to make it clear I'm not an engineer nor am I good at hacking. Just a scripter, programmer and software developer. I like Plutiedev webpage but my main machine is the full MarsCD with extension RAM cart (74ls612 pager). If people don't like my questions or answers, so be it. I had no response from Krikkz on "Assemblergames" but I might join "obscuregamers" forum.

    Esrael, quisiera saber si usted platica espanol. Dime por favor si usted conoce paginas con informacion de Apple 68000 y controladores de pager bankswitching. Me soprende que el uniquo lugar buscar informacion de MarsCD es en la www; es lugar hostile. Gracias ten buen dia.
     
  14. Esrael

    Esrael

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    No, I only speak Portuguese Brazilian.
     
  15. Techokami

    Techokami

    For use only on NTSC Genesis systems Researcher
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    Sonic Worlds Next
    Went to start a new save game, and...
    Sonic 2 Delta v029.2020-03-11 08.57.53.png
    Using Genesis Plus GX via BizHawk 2.4

    Also would you like a more fitting font for your debugger? I've got the Sonic 2 menu font expanded to have all the DOS Code Page 437 glyphs.
     
  16. Esrael

    Esrael

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    The emulator must have support to SEGA Mapper or Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 Levels will fail to load, because their data are located above 0x400000 and are remapped to 0x300000.

    About debugger font. This debugger was originally made to use in my operating system "Neto Mega Drive DOS" and some characters are used by system menus.
     
  17. Tanman Tanner

    Tanman Tanner

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    The Sonic 2 special stages apparently gives a perfect bonus regardless of whether or not you got all the rings. I'm not sure if this intentional or not. Additionally, the sound driver sometimes bugs out and cause a melodic-mechanical-sounding sound. A good example of this is if you use Hyper Sonic and encounter Knuckles in an event (such as the intro), where the sound driver will play a weirdly melodic group of sounds THEN plays Knuckles' theme. Additionally, the right side of the screen occasionally lacks collision when in screenlock. My emulator is Gens.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  18. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    So I gave this a shot yesterday. It was good overall but a couple things:
    • The game crashed in HPZ act 2 and my save data was wiped and replaced with weird garbage saves. I then tried accessing HPZ through the level select and the level was a garbled mess until I died. It also had me play as Sonic and Tails even though I picked Knuckles and Tails (this also fixed itself after a death)
    • Sometimes when the bosses loaded a lot of objects turned white. This fixed itself after the zone cleared
    • When the act started or if I came back from a bonus stage the screen would sometimes randomly jump somewhere for a second.
    • Knuckles can't break some of the walls in the Sonic 1 and 2 levels with his fists
    Now just for some recommendations:
    • The name Sonic 2 Delta really no longer makes sense.
    • What is with the level order with the Sonic 1 and 2 levels? It just seems random.
    • Some strange art choices. The title screen is a weird mishmash of Sonic 2 beta and final sprites, but the game uses Sonic 3 sprites?
    • It seems weird that the Sonic 2 chaos emeralds and the Sonic 3 chaos emeralds are the same thing.
    • Maybe add level transitions for the Sonic 1/2 levels?
    • Genocide city act 2 is literally just Chemical Plant act 2. Maybe just cut that act.
    • It'd be cool if Tails was able to carry Sonic or Knuckles like how he can in Mania and S3 Complete
    • Maybe add the elemental shield monitors around Sonic 1 and 2 levels?
    I was playing in Kega Fusion btw. Overall great work, just a bit rough around the edges.
     
  19. Esrael

    Esrael

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    This was intentional, When I was recoding the SS Results object. I found this never-seen "PERFECT BONUS" item and leave this enabled ( Its impossible to get all rings in a Sonic 2 Special Stage ).

    About others errors, I will release a new version with some fixes. At this time, I am working on fixing the critical errors.

    -The level order come from original project Sonic 2 Delta and was chosen by level difficulty.
    -The idea of emeralds is because Knuckles steals them at beginning of Angel Island and you needs to get them again.

    Some levels was never finished, The Genocide City was originally planned to be just one ACT as seen in the Title Card, but the level sequence was not updated.

    I left this project untouched for years, and after some persons asking for a more playable version of 40Mb version, I decided to make this more playable and following the SEGA Standards to avoid conflicts to others hardware addresses, turning this compatible with Genesis CDX and emulator like Kega which emulate a Genesis with a SEGA CD and crash if you use addresses above 0x3FFFFF.

    Thanks for testing and reporting errors.
    Suggestions are accepted.

    Best Regards:
    -----------------
    Neto
     
  20. Techokami

    Techokami

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    1) Well hell. What emulator DOES support this mapper? And furthermore... I'm having trouble locating information about this mapper on the Sega Retro wiki. Is this the same mapper that's used with Street Fighter 2?
    2) Yeah, I know about that. (MD-DOS looks incredibly interesting! Shame all the info is in Portuguese Brazilian, I'm not fluent in that language.) I was just offering a replacement for this specific project.